Patient Being Treated for Possible Ebola Exposure in California

20 Aug 2014

Health officials announced on Tuesday that a person who might have been exposed to the Ebola virus was admitted to Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center in California, and is in isolation while health officials and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) await the results of the patient’s blood work.

The results of the blood work will be available in a few days, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Kaiser reportedly would not reveal any details about the patient, including age, gender, when they were admitted to the hospital, or if they had traveled to West Africa recently; where the Ebola outbreak has claimed the lives of over 1,100 people.

According to Dr. Stephen Parodi, an infectious disease specialist at Kaiser Permanente in North California, the patient has been isolated “in a specially equippednegative pressure room” where trained staff are using “personal protective equipment” and are coordinating “with infectious disease specialists,” the Chronicle notes.

Dr. Parodi said that “in order to protect our patients, staff and physicians, even thoughinfection with the virus is unconfirmed, we are taking the actionsrecommended by the CDC as a precaution, just as we do for other patientswith a suspected infectious disease.”

California’s Department of Public Health reportedly issued a statement late Tuesday evening calling the Sacramento case “low-risk” while noting that testing was being done “out of an abundance of caution,” the Chronicle writes.

As of now, there are zero confirmed cases of Ebola in California, and at least seven individuals across the United States have been tested for the deadly, hemorrhagic virus.

The gestation period for Ebola is anywhere between 2 and 21 days. (Click here to read some facts about Ebola from Breitbart News.)

So far, the only two confirmed cases of Ebola in the United States are two Americans who were infected with the disease. They are Christian charity workers Dr. Kent Brantley and his Nancy Writebol, a missionary who worked for Dr. Brantley. They contracted Ebola while working in Liberia.

Both individuals are currently being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Their recovery is partially attributed to the experimental drug Zmapp.